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Butch Cavendish, the villain in
The Lone Ranger
movie, has the cold eyes of a killer and, to the dismay of many parents, a sneer emphasized by a cleft lip.

Parents and organizations that support children with cleft lip have called for a boycott of the new Disney film and have urged people to write letters and tweet their views so that anyone browsing the net will see their complaint.

They say that children with cleft lip will be mocked as bad guys and be more vulnerable to bullying and ridicule.

Rachel Mancuso, who runs
the website cleftsmile.org
from Wyoming, Mich., says she’s received about 1,000 emails a day in the last week from supporters angry about the film — although her organization isn’t calling for a boycott. “As a parent and educator, I’m having a hard time understanding why they had to create a bad guy and slap on the number one birth defect.”

The movie adds fuel to a continuing debate about evil-doers in the movies that are made to look more frightening by disfigured faces. In the James Bond film
Skyfall
, the villain played by Javier Bardem, is unsettling and cruel, but appears even scarier when he removes a facial implant to show a disfigured mouth and gaping teeth.

Article Continued Below

In the Batman movie
The Dark Knight
, the handsome actor Aaron Eckhart is a principled lawyer who turns evil when his face is disfigured. In
The Phantom of the Opera
, the title character is driven to madness by the horror of his face.

“There is no cinematic metaphor more hackneyed or shallow,” writes David Roche, a motivational speaker whose own face has congenital malformations. “Time after time the facially disfigured are shown as barely human, driven insane by deformity and ready to retaliate with mutilations or murder.”

Still, there are actors in the movies and on television who scare us silly, though they look bland as a bowl of porridge. Andrew Scott, who plays Moriarty in the BBC series
Sherlock
, comes to mind, as does Bardem in his Academy Award-winning turn in
No Country for Old Men
.

In the UK, a charity called Changing Faces has pushed back against stereotype of disfigured villains in the movies. In 2012 it ran a campaign called Face Equality on Film and commissioned a dramatic one minute public service video called
Leo
. In it, the actress Michelle Dockery (from Downton Abbey) hurries home on a rainy night while a man, with severe burn scars, waits outside in the car. The man, Leo Gormley, seems to be a villain — villains are always scarred, right? — sure to do her harm. The film ends with unexpected joy and the question: “What did you think was going to happen?”

It isn’t the cleft itself in
The Lone Ranger
that upset some organizations; many would like to see more actors with cleft in the movies.

Interviews with the film’s production team showed that the cleft was created to make the actor William Fichtner, who does not have a cleft, look more “creepy, sinister and evil,” says Sue Carroll, of the Cleft Lip and Palate Association in the UK. The organization said in a statement that Disney is “cashing in on prejudice” and “we are being dragged back into the dark ages.”

Publicity material describes the character Cavendish as a ruthless outlaw “whose terribly scarred face is a perfect reflection of the bottomless pit that passes for his soul.”

Julie Cwir, a Manitoba mom, wrote to Disney to complain: “We’re incredibly disappointed in Disney. I’d really think they’d show compassion to the children born with a cleft or who have a scar and will be compared by their peers to this villainous character with a cleft.”

Lego, the children’s toy manufacturer, is “perpetuating the view” she says, by selling a miniature version of the scarred character.

“It’s amazing how a single character can impact the way someone views a person with scars.”

She believes that children with cleft lip and palate are positive and powerful role models. “The scars have made them heroes. They overcome so many struggles. They survived near death. Some have been abandoned by parents, yet they show resilience and compassion.”

About one in 700 children in Canada is born with a cleft each year, making it among the most common of birth defects. Cwir’s 2-year-old son was born with a cleft lip and underwent surgery at four months. He’ll have another operation when he is six.

“I do understand that it’s a movie and Hollywood will exaggerate things to get their point across,” says Cwir, who is compiling a book of stories about children with cleft. “We need to make a fuss about this. I don’t want our society to associate difference with something negative or evil.”

Advocates for children with cleft note that the film was released in July — which has been named Cleft and Craniofacial Awareness and Prevention month.

But some who work with children with facial differences are hesitant to bring added attention to the film.

“We are disheartened and sad to see this in a movie, and it would be great if Disney would think more thoroughly when they construct a character, but we don’t want to give it too much importance,” says Esteban Lasso, executive-director of the Canadian charity Transforming Faces.

Disney officials did not respond to interview requests.

Some studies have shown that kids with cleft seem to deal better with problems of self-image during their teenage years, precisely because they have dealt with it almost since birth, he says.

While children in the western world have good access to care, they often require multiple surgeries over several years. In the developing world, children with cleft certainly suffer more.

“My first thought when I heard about the film was Francis, a child I met in Peru, a child with a cleft,” says Lasso. “He was teased really badly. They called him an extra terrestrial, a Martian. It was really, tough.”

Clarification - July 22, 2013:
This article was edited from a previous version that did not make clear that Rachel Mancuso's organization, Cleft Lip & Palate Foundation of Smiles, did not call for a boycott of the Disney film.

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